Monday, June 23, 2008

Truths from fuzzy-tailed friends

(I am going to try to NOT share many of my writing from my "past life," but there are a few things I want to either redo or simply share in their raw form. Staying with the animal theme here, I had to share this one! Hope that's OK! It's from 2005, if that matters.)

Squirrels are funny creatures.

Seriously, they are.

Some folks think squirrels are just oversized ratswith big, fluffy tails. I simply give them a bit morecredit than that even though my computer’s dictionarydefines them as “arboreal bushy-tailed rodents.” So Iguess that means they are first-cousins to a rat aka“long-tailed rodent.”

As a child, I was fascinated with them. So much sothat my grandfather, George Hughes, would takeafternoons off from selling insurance and take me towatch them play in the trees at the city park.

Not long after our ritual began, Papaw nicknamed meafter the furry animals. No one has called me thatsince his death, but I often think of him as I watchone scamper across my back yard looking for pecans.

Of course, I don’t have such warm feelings about thesquirrel (or more than one fuzzy-tailed monster) thatcontinuously jumps from tree to roof and sprints alongthe top of my house above where I’m trying to sleeplate on the Saturday mornings I can.

It seems a friend of mine has had a similarfascination with the furry ones. Or so she told me theother night as she was looking through an old journalshe found at her house. It seems that while incollege, she was asked to give a devotional for theWesley Foundation. Her talk was inspired, apparently,by a stint watching a squirrel play in her backyard.

From this observation, she gleaned three squirrelfacts that can aptly be applied to our lives as humanbeings.

The first one? Sometimes you just have to jump.

While watching the squirrel stand on one limb and looklongingly at the branch of a nearby tree, she askedherself what the squirrel might be thinking. He couldbe, she penned, thinking that the branch was simplytoo far away and he couldn’t possibly jump that far.Or what if he jumped and missed? The failure could befairly costly to the little fella.

Perhaps, she surmised, that the squirrel woulddetermine in his little squirrel brain that the riskwas far too great and wouldn’t jump at all. Instead,he would remain content in the safe confines of thetree that he knew would hold him.

The second truth of sorts determined from the squirrelwatching was discovered after the animal actuallyjumped. “Hang in there!” was the outcome. Leaping fromthe safety of the branch that held him, the squirrelfound himself swaying toward the sky and toward theground on a much smaller and flexible limb. It wouldbend a lot but not break.

From that observation, an object lessons was formed.God never said doing his work would be easy, shewrote. Many times taking that first leap and doingwhat God calls us to do is the hardest. We think thelimb is going to break and we will fall. Things maynot go the way we think they should but we have got tohold onto his words and his promises, know he is incontrol and we can do it with his help.

How about the third point?

It seems that once the squirrel got his bearings andrealized the limb was gonna hold, he decided to keepclimbing toward the original destination. He keptclimbing higher and higher. We, too, should keep goinghigher because there is always room to grow closer toGod, my friend concluded. What is God calling you todo today?

After hearing this devotional read again five yearslater, I felt very uplifted and encouraged. And I’mcertain I will treat squirrels with a bit higherregard now.